Random thoughts

Causes and consequences by Mark Richardson. It's now Spring 2020. Reading the last paragraph made me chuckle. Still unpublished. To be expected when all I managed to write between 2004 and 2017 was one short story. Sandon High school, Meir, Stoke-on-Trent during late October 1996. Whilst Blur and Oasis battled for our minds and souls in the charts, a very different type of battle was occurring in a History classroom in the above-mentioned school: a battle whose consequences have and continue to ripple through time and space. At the time of writing this autobiographical piece, I have had experience of teaching History, English and Media studies. I have worked in a total of fifteen schools as a supply teacher, three of them as a long term cover teacher and finally as a full-time teacher of English and Media studies at Bluecoat comprehensive school. Let’s return to 1996. I had just celebrated my twenty-sixth birthday and was about to enter a new chapter of ...

By the end of this year I will be in my fifties.  This milestone in my life has inevitably resulted in me evaluating what I have achieved in my life.  I don't really want to go into details of my own personal life here in my blog.  I will however, reflect on my very slow progress as an aspiring writer. Like most people I've had my ups and downs.  I've got a loving family with two young daughters and three grown up step children.  I can just about afford to keep a mortgage and household running although in my permanent job I work four days a week.  Luckily,  I can also work as a freelance exam marker and that can make up some of the shortfall in my income. For years I have harboured a desire to become a writer.  Indeed back in 2004,  I took a Creative writing course at College with view to pursuing a writing career.  However, at that time I was settling down with my wife and Step children and found myself a Head of Department at the s...

Well, that's the second short story for the 5-7 year olds I've written. (They are very short- 800 words long due to target audience). They are prequels to the Young adult fantasy stories I am writing. I've just completed Chapter seven which was 5, 340 words long bringing the total up to 27,831 words so far. I'm aiming to get up to chapter 10 written by the Summer holidays as work commitments from June onwards until the Summer holiday will be somewhat intense.

As a relatively inexperienced writer, I value constructive feedback on any writing I create. I've been able to participate in two Blurb day events in a writing group called 'Writer's soap box' I belong to on Facebook. I've been able to take my first 'written off the top of my head' attempt down to something which is now hopefully more concise. First attempt: Sarah's Great, Great Grandmother Ruth was a famous children's author of a series of fantasy books set i n the magical kingdom of Cantre’r Gwaelod in a world called Faerie.  The books told the adventures of Ruth with a Faerie friend Aberfa and a boy called Arvid who was out to spoil their fun.  Bored and fed up on holiday,  Sarah makes a shocking discovery:  her Great, Great Grandmother Ruth's tale really happened.  Cantre’r Gwaelod, in the world of Faerie, is real. Aberfa is real.  Arvid threatens the security of both Faerie and Earth by trying to locate the secretly impri...

‘It is time,’ sighed Anarawd. ‘Indeed, Husband: I hoped it would never come to this,’ Eleri replied mournfully. They closed their eyes and concentrated on the words. They formed in the mind swirling, encroaching, pushing all thoughts out. The words were of anger, wrath and defiance. Words created in defence: as a last resort to defeat the Rammligr and save humanity. A protective shell enveloped them and they hovered into the sky. The elderly couple started to rock in unison, murmuring, muttering words which hadn’t been uttered out loud for aeons. The couple started to shine like a beacon as the words tumbled from their now gaping mouths: words screeched and took a life of their own. Phantom like, the words punched through the lower atmosphere causing clouds to form. Tendrils of light enveloped the land and tickled the surface. The inhabitants looked up in dismay: they were going to miss Earth. The layer of life blinked. The shell like land looked forlorn, bereft of the multi...

Photos taken during recent trip to Ross on Wye and the surrounding area including Symmonds Yat,

‘These tales of the legendary king and his knights of the Round Table form a highly readable abridgment of Thomas Malory's classic Le Morte d'Arthur. Beloved fables of Arthur, Merlin, Guinevere, Galahad, Lancelot, and other denizens of Camelot.’ Taken from the Amazon web page promoting the book. Is the statement describing Knowles’s book available on Amazon. He wrote the book in 1895 as an easier, more updated version of Thomas Malory’s Morte D’Arthur. I chose this book to read first as I had perused Malory’s book and found it to be interesting but potentially challenging as it was written in a hybrid of Middle English and Early modern English. I reasoned that a book written in the late nineteenth century would be a gateway to a possibly harder to decipher older text. Indeed some of the language used is more modern however, the text is littered with lots of examples of archaic language such as Anon. I found it quite interesting discovering older words which are no lo...